New policy debugging feature in the Azure Api Managment VS Code extension

Before the summer of 2019, the only manageable way to publish and manage your APIs in Azure API Management, was through the Azure administration portal and API Management Publisher Portal.

But then a new Azure API Management extension for Visual Studio Code became available that brought us a new surface for working with your APIs in your development tool.

The main features of the extension include:

Create and delete an API Management instance
Create an API by importing an OpenAPI specification
Edit APIs and operations in Azure Resource Manager or OpenAPI formats
Edit policies at any scope
Associate an API with a product

Create, delete, and edit Named Values
Test an API using REST Client
Command Palette support for most features
Extract API and service configurations into ARM templates
Import Azure Functions – Transform HttpTriggers into APIs

Import App Service WebApp
Manage Self-Hosted Gateways
Policy Debugging
Scaffold Azure Functions
Show diffs against last saved version

However, I would like to highlight the new capability for real time debugging your API-policies within Visual Studio Code.
This allows you to set breakpoints on policy statements, inspect properties and dig deeper into errors during execution of the policy.

I really think that this and all the other extension features, really will speed up the development, deployment and testing of APIs.

In developer forums, I can notice a lot of positive feedback on this feature and that the extension satisfies a need in the community.